Wednesday, August 5, 2015

TUCKER TOOL SHOT PLATES

I love new tools! Yesterday I received two Tucker Tool shot plates that I ordered from Indian Jewelers Supply. I first saw them demonstrated in a video by Leslie Villareal on YouTube and knew I had to have them. I need more tools! Here is a photo of the shot plates.

Seriously, I have had the urge to start working with sterling silver again. I still love copper, but wouldn't it be fun to combine the two metals or make a bunch of sterling silver earrings for myself! Yes!

If you watched the shot plate video demonstration, you'll see you need to gather your silver scraps and melt them into perfect little balls. So much fun. BTW, she demonstrates the shot plate at the end of the video.

So the first thing I did was get out my new charcoal block and made some little piles of silver scrap.

Magically the heat of the torch formed the silver into balls.

These were so small that I made more with bigger piles of scrap.

Then a third batch .....

They were finally getting to be the right size for the larger depressions on the shot plates. So I tried a couple. First putting the round side of the ball into the depression and hammering the top flat.

Here are two finished ones. A little blurry.

It's harder than it looks. I need way more practice with the larger ones. The third piles of silver were a bit too large, so I'll try again tomorrow .. in the cool of the morning. But I managed to get a few done, so I have a few decorated balls and a few plain ones. The nice thing is, they all have a flat bottom which makes it easier to solder them to your projects.

It's funny that I have that set of three tools from Harbor Freight shown in the video. I tried using the blue one on the larger one and it didn't stay in the silver. But I had no problem getting any of them out of the depressions. Like I said, it looked easy, but ..... My two big ones look too thick, so I'll have to find a happy medium. I'll post when I do something with them. A single textured ball and a small plain ball would look great on an earring. Don't you think?